I remember the first time I opened NinjaTrader™.
What is “Control Center”? How do I start controlling? My mind went into a blank. I closed it and went back to my broker’s proprietary trading platform.
It was months later before I mustered enough willpower to find out how to bring up a chart in NinjaTrader™. That was my first step to discovering what NinjaTrader™ has to offer.
This is not the definitive guide to NinjaTrader™. This is a quick guide to get you looking at a chart in NinjaTrader™ in 5 minutes.
1. Installing NinjaTrader™
Download NinjaTrader™.
New users need to register to get a license key for using NinjaTrader™. It’s completely free for charting.
After downloading, click on the file to start installation. Follow the step-by-step instructions to install NinjaTrader™.
Click on the NinjaTrader™ icon on your desktop to start the software.
2. Connecting to a Data Source
NinjaTrader™ comes with free end-of-day market data for US stocks and forex.
Click on File > Connect > Kinetick – End of Day (Free).
You will hear a short pleasing sound which means you are now connected to the free data source.
At the bottom left of the window, you should see a green box with the words “Connected – Kinetick”.
3. Loading a Price Chart
Now, let’s load up a chart.
Click on File > New > Chart…
You will see a dialog box “Data Series” as shown below. Type “AAPL” into text box circled in red and press enter.
The right panel has options galore as shown below.
For now, just take note of the three fields marked out by the red arrows.
- Type: Periodicity of your chart including Day, Week, Month, etc.
- Chart style: Candlestick, Bar, Line and other more exotic ones.
- Days to load: Number of days to load in your chart. Kinetick has only 10 years of free data so 3560 days is the most until you get other data sources.
For now, let’s leave everything untouched and click OK.
You should see the chart of Apple Inc now.
4. Loading Chart Indicators
Click on the third button from the right. It shows “Indicators” when you hover your mouse over it.
From the dialog box that will appear, you can choose your favorite indicator.
Click OK to load the indicators.
Now, have fun experimenting with the trading setups we have here.
Next Step – All that NinjaTrader™ has to offer
I hope this short tutorial has helped to kick-start your journey as a NinjaTrader™.
NinjaTrader™ has many other functions including automated trading, market scanning, alerts, and custom indicators. You can take your time and explore these functions with its Help Guide and support forum.
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